You're probably missing some important OpenGL extension, it would be hard to say which without the vmware.log file from your VM. I also wouldn't expect that 3D support would be usefully fast on an MX4000, they're about 7 years old now and weren't terribly fast cards back then. You'll be missing support for all modern games as the MX4000 lacks programmable shader functionality.
That said, I don't think we have a list of video cards that we expect to work. For 3D support on a linux host the video card must support OpenGL 1.4, compressed, 3D and non-power of 2 textures, and framebuffer objects (this is likely to be the feature missing from your hardware). We've tested workstation on everything from an ATI X850XT and Nvidia 6600gt to current hardware like the Nvidia GTX260. If you're in the market for new graphics hardware, anything from the Nvidia 8000 or 9000 or AMD 3000 or 4000 series would be a reasonable bet. I wouldn't buy anything much older than the low end of that range. I prefer Nvidia hardware as their linux driver is much more mature than the AMD driver. It also receives the most testing internally.